Antrea vs Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium

Antrea9.0Visit Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium8.4Visit

Higher score Antrea #3 in Container Networking Software 9.0/10 Open source ✓ 0 of 5 features Visit Antrea

vs

Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium #7 in Container Networking Software 8.4/10 Pricing on request ✓ 0 of 5 features Visit Cisco

• Antrea fits best

  Advanced policy and multi-cluster networking

• Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium fits best

  Enterprise Cilium networking for self-hosted clusters

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Side by side

Feature	Antrea 9.0/10 Visit ↗	Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium 8.4/10 Visit ↗
At a glance
Editor score	9.0	8.4
Ranking	#3 in Container Networking Software	#7 in Container Networking Software
Best for	Advanced policy and multi-cluster networking	Enterprise Cilium networking for self-hosted clusters
Pricing model	Free	Paid
Starting price	Open source	Pricing on request
Free plan	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Free trial	—	—
Deployment	Cloud, Self-hosted	Cloud, Self-hosted
Support	Community, Docs	Docs
Integrations	10 integrations	4 integrations
Built for	Small business, Mid-market, Enterprise	Mid-market, Enterprise
Features Antrea 0/5 · Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium 0/5
CNI plugin	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Network policies	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Egress control	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Multi-cluster networking	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Encryption in transit	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Specs
Supported platforms	Not checked yet	Not checked yet
Our review
Pros	Advanced policy tiers, priorities, and cluster policies Multi-cluster networking with encryption and service support Traceflow, packet inspection, and flow visibility	Identity-aware L3/L4 and L7 policies with network segmentation eBPF forwarding, encryption, routing, overlays, and load balancing Hubble provides cluster-wide traffic-flow observability
Cons	Requires Kubernetes and Open vSwitch-based pod networking Self-hosted deployment places operations with the adopting team Its feature depth may exceed simpler cluster networking needs	Pricing requires a sales conversation and is not published as a dollar price Designed for self-hosted Kubernetes and OpenShift environments Commercial licensing differs from open-source Cilium alternatives
Our verdict	Antrea is an open-source Kubernetes networking solution for teams managing clusters across public or private clouds and bare-metal infrastructure. It implements the Container Network Interface and Kubernetes NetworkPolicy, using Open… Read the review →	Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium is a commercial Kubernetes networking and security platform built on Cilium and eBPF. It is intended for platform, cloud-native, NetOps, and enterprise infrastructure teams managing self-hosted Kubernetes… Read the review →

Strengths and trade-offs

• Antrea — where it wins

  • Advanced policy tiers, priorities, and cluster policies
  • Multi-cluster networking with encryption and service support
  • Traceflow, packet inspection, and flow visibility

  Where it doesn't

  • Requires Kubernetes and Open vSwitch-based pod networking
  • Self-hosted deployment places operations with the adopting team
  • Its feature depth may exceed simpler cluster networking needs

• Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium — where it wins

  • Identity-aware L3/L4 and L7 policies with network segmentation
  • eBPF forwarding, encryption, routing, overlays, and load balancing
  • Hubble provides cluster-wide traffic-flow observability

  Where it doesn't

  • Pricing requires a sales conversation and is not published as a dollar price
  • Designed for self-hosted Kubernetes and OpenShift environments
  • Commercial licensing differs from open-source Cilium alternatives

• Antrea9.0/10 · Open source

  A strong open-source choice for advanced Kubernetes networking, policy, and visibility.

  Visit AntreaFull verdict →
• Isovalent Enterprise for Cilium8.4/10 · Pricing on request

  A self-hosted Cilium platform for policy-controlled Kubernetes networking and visibility.

  Visit CiscoFull verdict →